25 Times Karma Came Back To Bite And People Were Served Revenge

Many of us were taught in our youth that it’s best to always choose the high road. Be the bigger person, turn the other cheek. Don’t retaliate when someone wrongs you. And while that’s all great advice, sometimes, people deserve to learn a lesson. There’s a fine line between choosing not to get back at someone and enabling their inappropriate behavior, so every once in a while, it’s worth it to get that sweet, delicious revenge. If someone litters on your lawn, scratches up your car, cheats on you or harms someone you love, it’s only natural to feel the impulse to get back at them. And even if you know it might not be the wisest idea, you can still appreciate all of the people who have brilliantly enacted revenge in their own lives!

I certainly don’t condone violence, and I would never encourage you pandas to go out there and seek justice by harming another person. But if you are looking to get a taste of that tempting revenge, it might be important to understand what you’re getting yourself into first. As many people believe, revenge is best served cold, meaning that you should wait before immediately getting back at someone. This period of waiting can give you time to plot and scheme, or it might allow you to cool down and realize that getting revenge isn’t actually necessary! Why waste your energy on someone who doesn’t deserve it?     

And if you imagine yourself feeling much better after enacting your brilliant revenge scheme, you might be surprised to learn that it might not actually make you feel as great as you’d hoped. In fact, one Harvard study found that people who engage in acts of revenge tend to feel much worse after seeking justice. By trying to make another person feel guilty for their actions, we might end up feeling bad about our own choices. Two wrongs don’t make a right, right? Another study reported that revenge is “bittersweet,” with the capability to trigger positive and negative emotions, including tension, uncertainty and a sense of dread.

It’s also important to consider the long-term effects of how our devious revenge plots may make us feel, Geoff Beattie, Professor of Psychology at Edge Hill University, writes for The Conversation. Over time, we may begin to empathize with the perpetrator who upset us initially, and we may realize that they could have grown and matured since hurting us. Did getting back at them teach them a lesson, or did it cause even more damage to our relationship with them? It can be hard to predict the impacts of revenge, so deciding to act can always come with some risks.    

One alternative to revenge is its famous foil: forgiveness. It can be much harder to choose this path, especially when a wound is fresh. But is it more rewarding? One study published by the American Psychological Association found that choosing revenge over forgiveness can actually cause victims to remain in a dehumanized state that their perpetrators put them in. When individuals go the route of forgiveness, on the other hand, they are likely to feel just as human as if no one had ever harmed them.

“The research suggests that forgiveness is a transformative process that involves releasing negativity toward the transgressor and possibly increasing positivity and feelings of benevolence towards them,” Mark Travers at Forbes explains. “It is considered a moral response rooted in the virtues of mercy, unconditional love, and generosity. And, because of its prosocial nature, it is treated as morally superior to a strict adherence to justice.”

As tempting as revenge can be, many of us believe that morally, it’s not the best choice. So choosing forgiveness instead allows us to act in line with our ethics and feel like we are better than the person who has done us wrong. Other benefits that those who go the route of forgiveness might see are “feeling a stronger sense of belonging to a human community, indicating that their morality was more central to who they are, and experiencing a lower propensity toward self-harm,” according to the same study. Like choosing between a greasy fast food meal and a fresh, nourishing homemade dinner full of veggies, revenge may be the easier, more tempting option, but we have to consider what will keep us feeling satisfied and healthy in the long run. 

According to Dr. David Chester, associate professor of social psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, revenge feels great in the moment because it triggers the reward circuitry in our brains, providing us with a pleasurable dose of dopamine and endogenous opioids. However, as with anything that gives us a rush of pleasurable feelings, we tend to experience a less enjoyable crash immediately afterwards. “There’s a hangover that kicks in quickly,” Dr. Chester told Well + Good. “Your nice little buzz or heightened positive affect fades fast, but the negative emotions, which were also heightened when you were hurting the person, will stick around and are quite durable.”   

It’s understandable that we feel the urge to get back at people, as Dr. Chester notes it’s a desire we have to ensure our own protection. “Vengeance is born out of a functional desire to keep others from taking advantage of us,” he says. “If we didn’t ever retaliate against people who hurt us, then people could theoretically hurt us all the time.” Unfortunately, nobody wants to run the risk of being a doormat, so sometimes, we would rather bite back than simply accept that we’ve been wounded.

While revenge might seem like a perfectly healthy and reasonable response in the moment, it’s important to consider how it may make you feel in the future. Perhaps there’s a healthier way to get back at someone than keying their car or writing their business a terrible Yelp review. Vanessa Van Edwards wrote a piece for Science of People exploring revenge, and she noted that “healthy revenge” might be the best course of action you can take. Rather than actively harming another person, this might include going on to be perfectly happy and unaffected by the harm they’ve done, working even harder to become even more successful than them, focusing on the positives and choosing not to stoop to their level and eliminating any thoughts about them at all. After all, the great Frank Sinatra once said, “The best revenge is massive success.”

Revenge has inspired countless films, novels, TV shows and even true crime stories detailing gruesome crimes that have taken place in real life. However, it’s not always as glamorous as it seems on the screen. If you believe in karma, it might be best to allow it to take its own course. And if you believe in choosing the high road, you’ll likely feel more satisfied by simply choosing forgiveness and knowing that you didn’t waste your energy on someone who might not have learned their lesson anyway.   

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